Positively Negative [Rewrite]

Apr07: Part Two; NOVEMBER RAIN - Break

POSITIVELY NEGATIVE V.0002 [REWRITE]

VOLUME/PART TWO [ #2 ]                    < NOVEMBER RAIN >

Chapter One: Break

FREDDIE

“It’s been so good having you here, Freddie.”

I looked up from the latte I was making. Travis Stanley ducked under the bunting of rainbow flags that hung from the ceiling just above the bar area, expertly tilting the tray of empty mugs, glasses and a coke bottle that he held in his left hand as he moved. He placed it down next to me and rested his palm on my shoulder when I smiled it him.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m good! I think. Struggled a bit with the machine earlier,” I admitted, “But it’s great to be here. I genuinely couldn’t thank you enough for letting me in and training me.” I paused, glanced down, “I needed this.”

“Ah, it’s no bother. You’re a quick learner. I don’t regret it yet!” he winked.

“Well that’s a lie,” Camilla snorted. She was Irish, petite, and in her mid-thirties with long hair, pinned back, dyed an old-lady-grey, a face of metal and a sleeve of pin-up girl tattoos. She was incredibly hard-core, even as she placed a pink ring doughnut on a tray beside an elaborately decorated strawberry milkshake for a customer who’d requested ‘extra fluff’.

“Heard him bitching about you yesterday.”

My eyebrows rose, along with the corner of my lips.

“Hey, now, don’t go twisting my words,” Travis scolded. “I simply cursed you,” he continued, brushing me aside as he finished the latte off for me, “because, as owner of this café, I should be the one the lads are drooling for, right?”

“Right,” Camilla drawled, hand on hip, sarcastic smile growing.

“But yesterday, I overheard two blokes who were very disappointed to have missed you. They’ll probably come back soon, looking.”

Travis ended with a sigh as I laughed at that, unsure whether to believe him.

“You do have a nice arse on you,” Camilla admitted grudgingly, crossing her arms.

“And fantastic eyebrows,” Travis moaned, finalising the latte by placing it on a saucer with a couple of sachets of sugar and offering it to me with flourish. “Take this to table 15 for me, love?”

“And this to table 2, sweet?” Camilla intoned.

I rolled my eyes. “No problem, guys.”

Sixth form broke up for half term on the 18th of October. The weekend before that I’d started looking for a job, unwilling to spend all of my holiday doing nothing at home but stewing in my own thoughts.

Kissing Joey at the beach had only happened two weeks before that.

We hadn’t spoken since—in reality, anyway. But in my head… In my head, we rarely left that scene. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The only relief I got was when I thought about my father, but that was hardly relief at all.

So I’d searched high and low for a job.

I’d originally wanted to work at Zen City. I used to go there all the time with Jay. It was a popular café run by a FTM transman called James and his girlfriend- an established artist called Freda. It was frequently visited by other members of the LGBT community, but they didn’t have any openings in staff so James suggested I try Ordeal; a café-bar owned by Travis, a 41 year old crossdresser with a beer gut and the kindest eyes you’ll ever see (not to mention the longest eyelashes, forget my eyebrows), who wore simple jeans-and-polo combinations to work but always spiced it up with a pearl necklace or some chandelier of a pair of earrings, and also ran the café with this boyfriend Michael.